The Relationship between Citizen and Mainstream Journalism for Covering Syria News

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The Relationship between Citizen and

Mainstream Journalism for Covering Syria News

Nasser Khasib

Submitted to the

Institute of Graduate Studies and Research

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in

Communication and Media Studies

Eastern Mediterranean University

May 2015

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Approval of the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research

Prof. Dr. Serhan Çiftçioğlu Acting Director

I certify that this thesis satisfies the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication and Media Studies.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ümit İnatçı

Chair, Department of Communication and Media Studies

We certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication and Media Studies.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Metin Ersoy Supervisor Examining Committee 1. Prof. Dr. Süleyman İrvan

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ABSTRACT

With the intercession of the new media, individuals were able to write news and publish videos through their participations on Social Networking Sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs. This study is centered on citizen journalism which comes from the participation of citizens in making news. The main purpose of this study is to show the relationship between citizen journalism and mainstream journalism in covering Syrian news.

The study interviewed 15 Syrians citizen journalists through the internet and he designed questionnaires to analyze the content of five Syrian events on Aljazeera news channel. The five Syrian events are Al-Bayda and Baniyas, the siege of Bab Amr, al Qusair and Khalidiya in Homs, Yarmouk camp, chemical on Al Gota.

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becoming their reporters. This leads to a question about the future of citizen journalist (activists) in Syria. This study asserts that since this is the case in a dictatorship country like Syria, it suggests that studies like this should be done for democratic countries to see the importance of citizen journalism. Secondly, the study also suggests that for other studies, news content published by citizen journalists on their blogs and YouTube should be analyzed.

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ÖZ

Sosyal medya ile birlikte, bireyler Facebook, Twitter ve bloglara katılım göstererek haber yazabiliyor ve video paylaşabiliyor. Bu çalışma vatandaş gazeteciliğine odaklanıp, gazetecilik tecrübesi olmayan insanların haber üretim sürecine katılarak katkı koymalarını araştırıyor. Ayrıca, çalışmanın temel amacı vatandaş gazeteciliği ile ana akım gazeteciği arasındaki ilişkiyi Suriye haberleri üzerinden Aljazeera televizyon kanalına uygulanan içerik analizi ile ortaya koymaktadır.

15 Suriyeli vatandaş gazetecisi ile internet üzerinden röportaj yapılmıştır. Ayrıca, Suriye’de yaşanan 5 olay Aljazeera haber kanalının haberleri üzerinden ele alınarak, bunun için bir anket geliştirilmiş ve içerik analizi uygulanmıştır. Suriye’de yaşanan 5 olayın isimleri şöyledir: Al-Bayda ve Baniyas, Bab Amr kuşatması, Homs’daki al Qusair ve khalidiya, Yarmouk kampı, Al Gota kimyasalları.

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Görüntülerin çoğunluğu Suriyeli karşıtların ve Al-Assad Rejimi tarafından öldürülen Suriyelileri kapsıyor. Vatandaş gazetecileri ile yapılan röportajlarda Aljazeera’nın Suriye haberlerinde alternatif kaynak olarak vatandaşların kullanıldığı ortaya çıktı. Ayrıca bu kişiler kanal tarafından kendi muhabirleri gibi ilgi gördü. Bu da Suriye’deki vatandaş gazetecilerinin (aktivistlerin) geleceğini etkileyen bir soruya yol açmaktadır.

Bu çalışma Suriye gibi diktatörlükle idare edilen bir ülkede yaşanan olayları kapsıyor. Benzer çalışmalar demokratik ülkelerde de yapılarak vatandaş gazeteciliğinin önemi ortaya konabilir. İkinci olarak, bundan sonraki çalışmalarda vatandaş gazetecilerinin kendi blog (günlük) ve Youtube hesaplarında paylaştıkları olaylar analiz edilebilir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Vatandaş gazeteciliği, ana akım gazetecilik, Suriye olayları,

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DEDICATION

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my appreciation to my supervisor, Assist. Prof. Dr. Metin Ersoy, whose expertise, understanding, and patience, and added considerably to my graduate experience. I appreciate his vast knowledge and skill in many areas (e.g., vision, aging, ethics, interaction with participants), and his assistance in writing this thesis.

I would like to express my appreciation to my supervisor, Assist. Prof. Dr. Metin Ersoy, whose expertise, understanding, and patience, and added considerably to my graduate experience. I appreciate his vast knowledge and skill in many areas (e.g., vision, aging, ethics, interaction with participants), and his assistance in writing this thesis.

Moreover, my especial thanks go to my lovely family for counties support, my father Jamal Khasib and my Mother Fatima Khasib, and I would like to thank my brothers Faraj and Majd Khasib, and my sister Manal Khasib for supporting me.

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LIST

OF TABLES

Table 1: Evaluation of Aljazeera News Report Headlines ... 58

Table 2: The Sources of Footage inside Aljazeera News Reports ... 59

Table 3: The Footage of News Reports Show ... 60

Table 4: The Feature of Footage ‘inside news report’ ... 61

Table 5: The Content of Footage that is used by ‘‘inside news report’’ ... 62

Table 6: How Many Times Aljazeera was repeating footages showed Killing and Blood Footage? ... 63

Table 7: How Many Times Aljazeera was repeating footages showed Violent Clashes? ... 64

Table 8: The Sources of Information used inside Aljazeera News Reports ... 65

Table 9: The Quality of Information used ‘inside news report’ ... 66

Table 10: The most repeated words used inside the News Reports ... 67

Table 11: How many interviews were used ‘inside news report’? ... 68

Table 12: The feature of interviews that were used ‘inside news report’ ... 69

Table 13: Which frames were used in Aljazeera news footage? ... 70

Table 14: The kind of information that is giving by citizen journalism through newscast related to ... 71

Table 15: The kind of information that giving by citizen journalists through newscast reflects ... 72

Table 16: Aljazeera is hosting citizen through newscast by: ... 73

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LIST OF FIGURES

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Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

With the intervention of the new media, individuals have played important roles in making news, whereas before the coming of the new media, the contents were mainly from traditional media such as TV, Radio, newspapers, and magazines. The citizen journalist played a significant role in many countries especially in Middle East. During “Arab Spring” especially in Egypt, Egyptian state media outlets were publishing previous president Mohammad Hosni’s regime propaganda for Egyptians. As a result, Egyptians found social media channels like Facebook and Twitter as a good platform to make popular campaigns against Mubarak's rule. As an example, most of Egyptians activists were communicating through social media channels like Facebook pages. By this way, people found another way through social media other than what was presented by the state owned media outlets. When the Egyptians brought down Mubarak from power, state media changed their orientation and started to cover news from Egyptian revolution activists’ blogs and Facebook pages. So, internet made the mainstream change their news coverage to include news published on news websites and sometimes news agencies also depend on individual’s post as the main source if there is no new information from their reporters’.

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Facebook timeline. A youth initiative was titled “You are the editor” launched on Syrian website “Tahree Syria”, this website allows freelancers and citizen journalist to transfer the latest news developments in the Syrian events. Also, “Syria News Youth”, “eyewitness Syria” and other pages were joined the “Syrian Edit” website. This way, citizens transformed from being a source of news to being the editors and publishers of the Syrian news (Marwan, 2012).

During Syria civil war, many Syrians became citizen journalists like Amal Hanano, Rami Jarrah or Alexander1 and they uploaded videos and sounds on YouTube. They were using fake names when they uploaded videos and other materials on social media to avoid being detected by the regime and to escape immanent death or imprisonment. Rami asserts that the Syrians did not see the first week of protests on state TV and other channels like Aljazeera and al-Arabiya. On the other hand, the killing of Syrian oppositions by Assad’s regime was covered by citizen journalists on social network sites. These coverages led mainstream media to the covering of news from citizens. As a result, mainstream media such as CNN added new icon called IReport that allows citizens to publish the latest news about Syria and other areas (Leigh ,2013).

Today’s technologies have contributed in making citizen journalism very important. Now, they have an impact on mainstream media through immediate news reporting. These technologies have helped to discover some of the most important activities that happened around the world such as Occupy Wall Street movements, Arab spring, and other major events. For instance, Ryan Boyette is a citizen journalist; he

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exposed the Sudanese government atrocities by using photos and video from eyewitnesses. Charlie Beckett said that network journalism may play an important role on global public sphere and creating a new news room way of life that will help fosters new journalism production (Revis, 2011). Naji (2015) asserts that citizen journalism comes as a result of expanding the gap between citizen and state, citizen and media institutions by traditional media. This led to less participation of citizen in different aspects of life like politics, economic, social (N. Jerf, personal communication, March 27, 2015).

However, professional journalists argue that citizens are not professional to create news content because they don’t consider accuracy and ethical standards which are standards that mainstream journalist follow. Also, citizens do not care about privacy, sensitivity and balance in writing news. During Syria events, citizens posted news about children dead bodies and deaths of Syrians were also recorded during that period. Professional journalists emphasize that sometimes citizens publish some manipulated videos which served activists group in Syria, such as Al-Assad Regime using chemical bomb against Syrians. They believe there is no gatekeeper on the news content from citizens because the features of news being accurate, balanced, impartial and newsworthy is lost (Niyomukiza, 2013). The study explains these concepts in the second chapter of the study (literature review).

1.1 Aims of the Study

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Aljazeera channel because it covered the five Syrian events through reports from citizen and mainstream journalists. However, Aljazeera is not allowed to cover Syrian news by the regime. Ali Hashim, a former correspondent of Aljazeera, said that Aljazeera paid $50,000 for “Syrian opposition” for telephone and internet to get an news from Syria, whereas Syria government criticized unbalanced coverage of Syrian news from some Arabic channel (Ruissa Today, 2012). Additionaly, the study makes interviews with some citizen journalism in syria to evaluate their experiments, and to help answering the rescerach questions.

1.2 Research Questions

In order to find the relationship between citizen and mainstream journalism, the research will try to find out answers of one major and four minors questions:

1. What is the relationship between citizen and mainstream journalists in covering Syrian news?

A) What is the importance of the Syrian citizen journalism? B) What are the problems of the Syrian citizen journalism?

C) What are the similarities and differences between citizen and mainstream journalists of covering the Syrian news?

D) What are the news reports contents used by Aljazeera channel on five Syria events?

1.3 Significance of the Study

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1.4 Limitations of the Study

There are two limitations of this study:

A- The study used Aljazeera channel for the analysis of videos but it’s important to note that Aljazeera is subjected to Qatar state policy which i find as a limitation to this study. However, it will help the study to find the relationship between citizen and mainstream journalism.

B- The study uses a definite name for the Syrian civil war because there is no united concept that studies agree to use in their articles. For instance, some studies used “Syria Revolution”, other used “Syria crisis”, and “Syria Civil War”.

1.5 Definitions of Terms

1- Blogs: “Blogs are interactive, non-synchronous web pages whose host upload posting the center of the topic .The topic need not be news, nor need it written following the standards and practices of traditional media ,and reader can write comment to bloggers posts” (Papacharissi, 2009, p. 109).

2- IReport: This is a CNN tool on their news website that allows citizens to publish videos and sounds. CNN checks for fairness and accuracy of the news and then they publish on their homepage site.

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Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Citizen Journalism

Following Jay Rosen (2008) definition of citizen journalism, he asserts that “When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another” (Deuze, 2009, p. 256). The purpose of gathering, reporting and analyzing information by the citizen is to give independent, reliable, and accurate information (Bowman & Will, 2003). In the effort to understand this concept, Luke (2009) submits that citizen journalism is sets of practices on internet which reflects the citizens and their engagement with journalism community. Sometimes, the citizen journalist gathers information to foster their activity through republishing and editing of news stories which comes from professional news agencies. Furthermore, the major source of citizen journalism is through eyewitness report with the help of smart phones which has the audio visual capacity to record voice, moving pictures and camera with high mega pixels. The citizen journalist gives information to reporters on the field who are to give reports to respective TV and Radio media outlets (Goode, 2009). From the defintions, citizens jouranlists take a handful of information at some point also from the mainstream media and this is important to understand as no man is island of knowledge.

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accedes that civic journalism aims to mend American public life and American journalism. He asserts that creating news by citizens is to get their attentions and participations efficacies (Grimes,1999).

Similarly, civic journalism concentrates on citizens and their communities and normative attitudes of civic participations toward public life. The idea is that civic journalism in a way gives a call to other members of the community to realize their ability to serve themselves good and quality information which makes them morally responsible for themselves and the community at large. To achieve this goal, civic journalist needs to participate their communities in public discussions, and entered civics views into new media (Grimes, 1999). Rosen (1999) explains how this kind of journalism works by saying:

Firstly, addressing people as citizen and potential participants in public affairs, rather than victim or spectators, Secondly, helping the political community act upon, rather than learn about its problem, Third, improving the public discussions to make public life well. So, it earns its claim on our attentions. Journalists have to restore public confidence in the press, and reconnecting with the audience that has been drifting away (Rosen, 1991, p.22)

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the people and the leaders are supposedly servant leaders who should do what the people wants (Pateman, 1970, pp. 1-15).

Apparently, individual’s participation in journalism over internet does defy age and sex factors. So, participatory journalism provides an interactive platform among community members irrespective of their age, sex, occupation and other demographics through the pictures, videos and sounds they have shared on the social media. Sometimes, some community members may be excluded from news because they get an altered version of the story (Domingo et al, 2008).

In recent times, citizen journalists have recorded a huge number of noticeable appearances in news coverage and reportage in topical issues around the world. A major instance is that of the war in Iraq in 2003, Salam Pax, one of the first citizen journalist got global attention from his reportage, his noticeable effort was to explain how western Journalists gave a one sided story giving the western readers an incomplete story. In this attempt, he seeks to find Arabic bloggers to give the other side of the story. Although Pax is not Arabic, but his post as regards this issue was detail oriented because it reflects Iraqis side of the story told by an Iraqi. The success of his post on this topical issue was based on readers getting to read his story which is written from two different view point (Campbella, 2014).

2.1.1 The Beginning of Citizen Journalism

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By 1988, Ledger Enquirer, a local newspaper in Columbus, was the first newspaper used the public journalism (Hass, 2006). After two years, when citizen or public journalism movement reflected the crisis among government and citizen, news agencies and their audiences, it led to the decrease in voters in political scope and shifted up to who participates in local community affairs. So, news agencies empathize on citizen participating in democratic process:

They produce greater amounts of election-related reporting; Second, include more staff-written stories; Third, they focus more on substantive election issues, candidates’ qualifications for office, and candidates’ policy records; Fourth, de-emphasize polls, campaign managed events, and candidates’ strategies and image-management tactics; Lastly, they rely more on non-elite sources, including women and minorities, than on elite sources for information ( Haas & Steiner, 2006, p. 241)

By this way, agencies motivate the public sphere between citizens, and show the most problems to citizen like educational and others (Hass, 2006). Citizen was able to express their point of views on news pages even more than politicians and their campaigns, and they find solutions into community forums, and local civic groups. For example, Waikato Times is one of the New Zealandnewspapers found in 1872, and it used phones surveying to ask citizens about their comments on different political parties. In the same way, they asked candidates to respond to citizen’s questions. And, if any parties rejected to answer, news organizations like Press, evening Post and others threated to add a block of white space of words under headline “No response” (Hass, 2006).

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aims to cover the issues from citizen’s perspectives. APN News also used the same section to identify citizens and their problems. As the result, Japanese newspapers such as Asahi, Kahoku Shimpo, Tokyo Shimbun, Chugoku Shimbun, Shinano Mainichi Shimbun and others emphasized on the strong relationship between citizen and journalists. For example, Shinano Mainichi Shimbun and Nishi-Nippon Shimbun newspapers focus on community forums that made a possible a public sphere platform between citizen and journalists during 1999 to 2003. Similar cases also happened in many European countries like Finland, Spain, and Sweden where using public journalism played a very important role. For instance, Diario de Burgos is local Spain newspaper and the media outfit motivated readers to give their opinions on political campaign and candidates. Also in South America with Clarin, La Nacion, El Tiempo, Gropo Refroma Newspapers, Swazi Observer, Times of Swaziland, Oxy-Jeunes, which are Radio, TV broadcasting, were collaborated using of public journalism in Africa (Hass, 2006).

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With the intercession of the new media, millions of citizens share information and their experiences on social network sites. Citizen journalism began to highlight many issues around the world like South Africa tsunami in 2005, hurricane Katrina which damaged the Gulf coast in US and many other topical issues were on news sites from citizen journalist, whereas the government media outlets do not give full information about the occurrence (Allan & Thorsen, 2009, pp. 17-31).

In addition, in 2009 Iranian presidential elections witnessed a violent crackdown on demonstrators which was covered by eye witness (Jurrat, 2011). For example, a video uploaded on YouTube by citizen journalist about the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan who was killed during protests in Iran was topical at that point. These are videos the government will ordinarily not want people to see, but the citizen journalist made it available to people. Khaled Saaed, an Egyptian activist was beaten to death by the police because he published a video that showed the corrupt practices of the police and their brutal treatment against protesters. Both of Neda and Khaled cases represents the “Revolution code” as a call to freedom. A Facebook page was created to this effect and Egyptian activists began to go against Mubarak’s rule such as the names of the page suggest freedom. It goes "we are all Khaled Saeed" (Ali & Fahmy, 2013).

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In recent times, a good number of new websites were created by citizen journalists to published articles, podcasts, photo and videos such as The Huffington Post, South Korean Oh MyNews.com, NowPublic.com, and Wiki Journalism2. These websites have operated to traditional newsroom media, and called “pro-am ventures”. These news sources allows professional to change some of their publication (Jurrat, 2011). In 2006, one of the most popular news channels in the world, the CNN news added a tool called “IReport”. This tool allows for citizens to upload videos and photos from events of daily life. In the same way, it became an important platform for contributing to breaking news stories all-around of the world. Moreover, it is a good way to publish news materials more quickly because it doesn't need acceptance from the editorial board. Mostly, these news materials are not edited. So, there is no guarantee on the content or coverage. Sometimes, CNN uses this mark “On CNN”, which means the reportage is useful to them, but it is from a citizen journalist. Helen Boaden, BBC s director of news thinks that citizen journalism has a significant future for newsgatherings as dynamic resources because it creates the new stories from audience experiences and using their knowledge and hosting their opinions (Allan & Thorsen, 2009, pp. 1-7).

Ultimately, it is important to note that all these different events are covered by non-professional journalists or citizen journalism “Peoples Platform” is making real interaction between people and news through blogging and sharing videos or photos directly as a breaking news. The news writing from the citizen’s perspective is more emotional than mainstream media (Allan & Thorsen, 2009, pp. 17-31). As a result, citizen journalism shows another point of view “citizen views" to audience, whereas

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it was prevented from government especially Arabic countries like Syria, Egypt and Libya. Also, Citizen Journalism is a way of reporting news outside mainstream media institutions. News stories have different subjects and ideas and are alternative sources of legitimacy (Radsch & Karlekar, 2012). It is important to note that formal journalist who follows media agency news needs to get approval on his news materials from his editor and head office of media outlet (Bowman & Will, 2003).

Citizens are motivated to make news based on these three elements: personalization, involvement, and contiguity see (figure 1). Citizen personalizes their content on internet to get positive attitude from audience. So, the different level of personalization determinates through user’s expertise. Another factor which is motivating citizen is involvement (interest and interactivity). Digital technology is used to provide the content with includes people interest. The contiguity includes hypertext and graphics on electronic web. Images makes audience remember easily what they have seen than text without image because have its way of way getting to our mind easily (Papacharissi, 2009, pp. 72-77).

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2.1.2 Online News and Blogs

In recent years, citizen journalism has allowed for the increase of citizens participation into news making on social network sites through posting, tagging and commenting so on. These acts are free for the citizen journalist on internet, whereas professional journalist serves the news organizations. The purpose of collecting data by citizens is to inform others who probably don’t have the knowledge; also it could be irregular data and needs to guide people of their ways and practices (Kim & Lowrey, 2015). Moreover, it makes search and the reach for information easier through mobile applications. The new media has made it easy to participate in public issues and discourse (Jurrat, 2011)

In “Being Digital “ book by Nicholas Negroponte (1995) argues that online news is a good platform for readers. You can easily choose the topic of your interest as a consumer. CNN, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post are USA online websites that provide readers some suggestion on possible things they will like to read on their sites and you can give a comment and suggest some ideas to the post read. For instance, 17 % of American used internet as a major source for news during the first day of the war in Iraq. A new form of participations started with internet age for publishing news daily events, personal storytelling like the blogs. These blogs make people more active on internet by participating with others on news post and sharing of ideas (Bowman & Will, 2003). New media platforms like YouTube and Vimeo and others allow users to make an account by connecting with their personal mail system like Gmail.

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attracts new audience members and they publish news which is useful for mainstream media journalist. Journalist blog are basically journalists who their own private blog that does not follow their media institution. Media blog as the name implies are blogs owned by professional journalists who work with media outlet. Lastly, citizens’ blogs are those kinds of blogs that are run by non-professional journalism and they do not have a relation with media institution (Kim & Lowrey, 2015). Bloggers divided into three categories which are activists, bridge- bloggers and public sphere bloggers. This bridge blogger means blogger who writes in different languages and probably different culture and nationality to their audience. Initially, blogs started to post in English language that reflected Western content and how liberal-minded elites in the region are. After that, Arabic blogs started and incorporated political, social and entertainment topical issues.

Arabic blogs were estimated to over 40,000 in 2006. During the war in Iraq, Arabic citizens used social network sites to express their ideas and make pressure on the government about their needs or opinion about certain issues. This way, Arabic citizens had impacted on politics and economic issues through expanding the space for freedom of expression, and creating an alternate viewpoint which never exists before (Hamdy, 2009).

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Blogs gave the opportunity to citizen to disseminate news and opinions faster than government controlled media outlets. On the other hand, some traditional journalism made media blackout for some events around the world. During the rule of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, he disallowed write up that criticize his policy in Egyptians media outlets. These media did not use news contents that criticize against him. When the citizen journalists covered main political issues and human rights abuses and social problems, it became an important source for information that attracts people by discussing the issue that matters to them, this also called for international attraction and attention. Arabic media at that time cannot control on the information people take because citizen journalism was attracting more audiences. But, not all Arab bloggers are journalists and must follow news standards. One of the famous bloggers that had articulated posts and good audiences was Baheyya, Sabah’s Blog, her blog consist of sensitive political, human rights, social and economic issues. For example, some blogs covered Wael Abbas’s exposure of police brutality in Egypt and the downtown Cairo sexual harassment (Hamdy, 2009).

The benefit of blogs during war is to give a different point of view from that of traditional media news reporting, but sometimes bloggers have certain ideology that might be full of propaganda and it becomes talked about easily. In the same ways, sharing photos online as a way of photo journalism makes citizen more interested because pictures may send message easily that a million words. Flicker is one of the social network site that helps citizens to store, search and share photo online (Allan & Thorsen, 2009, pp. 39-61) .

2.1.3 Citizen Journalism and Democracy

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citizens gave birth to the movement “reform” in 1980. This movement makes media not just to give information but also aims to revive democracy and it brings about publics into civic issues. Journalists have to distribute the information to audience to make them participate into making political decisions.

Following Schumpeter’s assertion, he argues that voting for leaders and discussion is the way of making people participate in politics. This way, citizens have a say in the leadership of their country especially during election campaign and the process of changing who is next to be in office. Thus, the percentage of participation is representing the requirement of producing a stable system of democracy (Pateman, 1970, pp. 1-15). This participation theory asserts that “The individual is the necessary basis on which rest political equality and political independence” (Pateman, 1970, pp. 22-23).

Moreover, the function of democracy is to provide dividends of democracy to its citizens through its law, elections so on. The elements of democracy like liberty and self –development provides in participatory society that embraced a power of political efficacy. In this society, the political problems play a significant role of shaping the citizens knowledge. Although, democracy calls for liberty, justice and equality, it also gives the minority of citizens’ voice to talk about their issues in participatory society (Held, 2006, pp.207-262).

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addition, media provides a good analysis frame work to help citizen on understanding the world. In order to take social empathy in journalism consideration, media tells people about other’s society. Fifth, journalism can create public form to make people more interactive and participation. So, the purpose of public form is to get diversity views from the different people in the society. Moreover, journalism helps to crowd citizens toward political programs (Schudson, 2008).

Journalism is another side of democracy, and it used from thinkers to make argument about French revolution in the pages of newspapers. On the other hand, it’s not necessary that democracy produces journalism, and the same thing with journalism. For example, American journalism found in colonial territories under a monarchical, colonial power, it was before American democracy (Schudson, 2008).

2.1.3.1 The Problem of Journalism

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The media in some Arabic countries like Syria, Libya, and Egypt suffer from the absence of positive and neutral sense. They do not discriminate supreme national interest, but they give biased point of view of power and allied with them and huddled around or beneficiaries. The absence of the objectivity is based on the main reasons. The trusteeship imposed by the executive branch of the media that and the problem of access to information and obtained (Al Sabah, 2007).

Sometimes, the problem of journalism is lacking of funding and so they rely on advertising as a source of income and it decentralizes decision making. Topics or issues are on newspapers for instance should not contradict the advertisers’ ideas because he who pays the piper dictates the tune. Adverts provide profits for media outlets. In a way, advertisers control the newspaper content. Media must be independent, writers have to express their opinions freely without interference from their editors who are the mouthpiece of the owners and that means the editorial board has to be independent too (Al Sabah, 2007).

2.1.4 The Important of Citizen Journalism

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contributes to traditional journalism and power hierarchies. The model of journalism that is used in American blogging has greatly impacted on political decisions in the states (Arnold, 2012).

Citizen journalist helps in collecting and disseminating news on blogs or personal account without gatekeeping. The mainstream media limited the individual movements over content that are controlled by the gatekeeper “elites”. Citizen’s user generated content (UGC) tends to go in line with human interest and might be not detailed but professional journalists look in depth for covering issues. In 2010, there was a study that aims to know how UGC is subjected to gatekeeping practices at the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). The study shows that it is a good way for viewers to be far away from traditional journalism sources and public service because it increased the competition in reaching audiences. The BBC editors prefer to use UGC that serve the same purpose of the news they want to report (Ali & Fahmy, 2013).

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At the end of 2012, more than 45,000 Syrians were killed in the Syrian civil war and over 470,000 Syrian refuges migrated to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and other countries (Syria Freedom, 2013). Although limiting freedom of press, mobile phone, camera, Facebook pages, YouTube were used to inform audience during Syrian civil war since 2011. Because of Syrian government campaigns to crackdown the protest movement, citizen journalist helps to break the repressive news which comes from regime, and prepares reports about Syrians oppositions events (Walla & El Zahedb, 2014).

2.2 Gatekeeping Theory

The first psychologist who found the gatekeeping theory was Kurt Lewin. This scholar was specialized in human behavior and their interactions with environment. In 1947, Lewin noticed that people were making decision about buying food from the channels. At the beginning, it started with housewives and their abilities to select the foods from markets. Later, he conducted a study that gatekeeper is not only focusing on the food, it also includes to news item (Roberts , 2005).

Besides Lewin, David Manning White incorporated newspaper’s editors to the concept of gate keeping and their significant role on selection news. In other words, editors dominated on what kind of news stories were published. In addition, these news stories must be interesting to the audience (Harmon, 1998).

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message and receiver. In his study with “Mr. Gates”3

, White focus on how individual makes the gatekeepers decisions, and he realized that not all the world events enter into the news room (Roberts , 2005). As White, editors depend on the ideology and personal perspective while they make decisions. Later, Giber’s study used many newspapers editors as sample. He concluded that wire editors try to make all news local by choosing the most important news to the audiences (Chima, 2012).

2.2.1 Gatekeeping Model

In this model, the editor plays an important role for publishing the news materials. While the flow of information starts from the sender to receiver. Gatekeeper’s selects the information which passes into the gate as a message to audience. On the other side, gatekeeper rejected the unwanted information if this information does not match with the agenda and his personal perspective. This process is illustrated in figure (2) (Theory, 2011). For example, Egyptians editors were publishing Mohammad Hosni’s regime content for Egyptians during his rule. However, editors removed the content which against Mubarak’s rule. As a result, the gatekeeper is dominating on what kind of news stories published, and removed the content that aims to change the group or society. Gatekeepers check also many standards before publishing news because of its “sensitive of image “and the influence of this news on audience, facts, and accuracy.

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Figure 2: Gatekeeping Theory Model (Theory, 2011)

Furthermore, the selection of information from editor is based on many factors such as audience interest, news norms and organizations so on. All the factors lead to the making of some news stories which are sensational, controversial and interesting to the audience (Soroka, 2012).

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2.3 Mainstream Media

Kenix (2011) submits that mainstream media makes the ideological values of any societies with a large scale of influence through publishing reports from professional journalists which are connected with corporations that are looking for a profit based on the government’s approval (Kenix, 2011, p. 3).

In other words, main stream journalism has contributed politically, socially, and economically and that make users consumed for these important issues. In addition; it also looks for findings in what media audiences find interest in. CNN, BBC, New York Times, Aljazeera and other channels are good examples of mass media outlets that do this (Cissel, 2012).

The basic difference between mainstream media and alternative is the size of the audience. Mainstream media mostly have a large audience whereas alternative targets particularly small-groups like ethnic, religious and occupation so on. Mainstream media ownerships are either by private and government corporations. Alternative media do not need too much funding. So, it shows the distance between views and how the power in the society controls the media (Tsfati & Peri, 2006). In addition, formal media have to be available to public without the need of any professional training and must be taken in different places from media organization (Attan, 2002, p. 25).

2.3.1 Journalism, Online Journalism

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news is mostly about political, local, cultural, sports and social issues (Mawsoah, 2012).

McKance (2009) argues that journalism tries to tell the audience information’s as much possible through reporters, photographers, production team who are responsible to give the reader’s information. For instance, photographers give the idea from image as we know pictures talk. More than 70,000 people work daily in the print journalism industry in Britain. Journalism is a huge effort not only from the journalist who writes an article, but behind the writing articles, there are groups of people who come up with ideas, they do the editing, design the pages and pictures and they organize them for publishing in the newspapers or other mass media. News report must have clear idea and accurate data from reality and also systematic way of telling the story to the audience. In addition, he accedes that writing news needs ability and training; it is not a guarantee that because you are literate you can be a good journalist. He added that Tom Stoppard covered news about an accident, Tom didn’t write a news report how the accident happened and if any one was injured. He wrote to describe the atmosphere and sky and how the heavenly bodies look beautiful. This act doesn’t show his ability of journalism writing even if he wrote a good material. Journalists are likely to use these words “I was there”. For example, terrorist bomb acquired at the Honourable Arillery company in the city road , all the photographers left this action except Jon Jones, he got the picture from inside and its was not the best shot , but “he was happy because he was there” (McKance, 2009, pp. 1-6).

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500 were wounded. Because of this tragedy, the internet services provider (ISP) gives American online news room and the opportunity for sharing of views about the bombing was possible (Sultan, 2005, pp. 69-77).

Journalism takes two publications forms. Firstly, publications which are issued from online media broadcasting like Newspapers, Magazine, TV, and Radio. Secondly, publications which are issued from some journalistic materials like blogs and other social media networks. Most of news websites have a short headline and very brief sentences of news stories in order to attract readers. These news websites take the headline stories from the news agencies or other corporations. For instance, BBC news added more value, and provided more information and background to this news like supporting it with pictures and making interviews to build a good news story. In 2003, Guardian newspaper unlimited site had 8 million people that they were reading the news per month because it was a breaking news site and it is easy to access (McKance, 2009, pp. 71-82).

2.3.2 Journalism Credibility

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the result, Slovenian journalists indicate online news media are less credible than traditional news media. Moreover, journalists who work for traditional media get news from agencies and they published the news. Sometimes they copy and paste exactly or they just rephrase in order not to lose their audience members. Although the traditional journalism is more professional, the internet sources and information for audience is increasing in community model. This model is serving information to public’s interest more than follow standards or elites instructions (Kovačič, Erjavec, & Štular, 2010).

By 2011, Aljazeera held media conference, which was titled “The Internet Journalism and freedom of opinion “ in Doha, Qatar. In this conference, Richard Roth, Dean of the School of Journalism at Northwestern University US, pointed out social networks sites became an important source for journalism while they are writing news. On the other hand, research director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, Robert Knight warns that huge information offered by Internet could mislead the audience. So he confirms that the journalists have to check the source of news and ask about credibility. As the media professor at Cairo University, Awatef Abdul Rahman asserts that blogs have a level of transparency. But, bloggers have to follow professional standards through citizen journalism to achieve balance and credibility. In the same way, bloggers indicated that censorship cannot prevent the flow of information on internet because it’s becoming “Internet Journalism” (Al-Bukhari & Ghaffar, 2011).

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publishing them from many sources. These sources must be reliable for the news media channel. Sometime, this accuracy is connected with the speed being the first of whom publishing the news. In this case, journalists have to accrue the news from their own reports, news agencies, eyewitness and other sources. Second, facts means that journalism created to tell the audience the truth and to be far away from fakes stories and unreliable sources. In order to achieve balance in the news, journalists have to cover the news from many different views. For example, Syrian editors have to include Al-Assad Regime and his opposing in the news reports by bringing the quotes from both of two different views. Additionally, impartiality is also related with covering the reality without entering agenda, and reporter views. Newsworthiness is determining the news which deserved to be publish or not, and it’s based on the audience interest.

2.3.3 Al Jazeera Channel

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When Aljazeera began broadcasting, it was for six hours a day because it was on one satellite which is Arabsat Satellite. Then they changed the transponder and raised the programs schedule to cover the whole day. For instance, Al Tittjah al Muakis (opposition direction) is one of the famous programs in the Middle East anchored by Dr. Fasel Al Qasem. The idea of this program is coming from a controversial political issue that is happening in the Middle East. He made crossfire by asking questions to two characters that have different views on the same issue. In order to create suspense, he creates a serious argument between his two guests. One is in support of the argument and the other is against it. Aljazeera gets financial aids from Qatar government and advertisements that promotes Qatar gas around forty or forty five minutes each day. Some of the companies owned by Qatar government also have their advertisement floated, other few adverts are from advertisers who run private companies (Miles, 2005, pp. 29-47).

Similarly, Aljazeera started to dish out international news from its English Channel for global audience since 2006. This channel also tries to cover cultural problems through documentary. It was a problem for Aljazeera English channel at first because they had to put into consideration making news not only for Arabic countries which they are used to before. It was a new start because they were starting off with a new language service whose culture and background is different (Seib, 2007, pp. 45-50).

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2.3.3.1 Aljazeera and Arab Spring

During Arab Spring, Arabic researchers asked many questions about how an Arabic channel like Aljazeera is covering these events. Khalid Al Haroub (2011) director of media program at the Gulf Research Center in the University of Cambridge submits that Aljazeera was not neutral with covering the Arab Spring. He said that Aljazeera became an important channel in Arab counties because it engaged with Arabic politics and supported some political and religious opposition that other mass media don’t cover. Plus, it followed Qatar policy that was supportive for Arab Spring in Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. So, Aljazeera intended to cover Arab Spring except Bahrain because of Qatar policy (Al Haroub , 2011) .

Campbell & Hawk (2012) found out that while Al Aljazeera was covering the Egypt revolution, it focused on social communication that was being used by the crowd who demonstrated and the political revolutions through sharing photos, videos, ideas on its social media pages. For instance, Aljazeera viewed how Egyptians posted videos and photos about demonstrations on Facebook pages. Aljazeera played an important role in shaping public views because it took videos from the events and repeating these clips and events shapes what the people think about the event (Campbell & Hawk, 2012).

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2.4 Syrian Civil War

“The Day of Anger” as translated from its popular Arabic tag in Syria was known as the day of Syrian opposition which started in February 2011. Initially, it didn’t get any serious responses from the Syrian public. Two months later, some Syrians began a peaceful protest in Daraa, but Syrian government prevented this act because they said that some of them killed police members and their goal is to fight Assad’s regime. On the other hand, Syrian opposition argues that the government killed some of protesters who have legitimate demands like get a better life. These events from Syria opposition came because they need to get an economic change to go out from crisis of corruption and monopoly of investment in Syria. One of the political activists, Ghassan Yassin, believes that Syrians need to get a freedom and equality through “getting rid” from Assad’s regime and applying the law toward new state (Abdullah, 2014).

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These Syrian events are different from the uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia because they started from peasants’ revolt which are Syrian Sunni against Basher regime and who supported him. In the same way, many Syrians participate in the peaceful march because some of their families were killed by the state. It started from rural areas like Daraa and Der Alzoor, and then reached to Homs, Hama and the large cities Damascus and Aleppo (Zisser, 2013).

2.4.1 The Reasons of Syrian Crisis

Harba (2011) argues in his research that “Syrian Revolution (Dignity and Freedom Revolution) Causes, consequences and developments, future prospects” are some of the many factors that caused the Syrian crisis which are economic social and political problems. There were two directions in Syria economic field: one is supported the separation between ownership and management in order to conserve the public sector, and other one is Bourgeois and Bureaucracy which benefited from large-scale of collection of funds in the state because they have their goals and don’t care for conserve the public sector. For instance, Syrian government allowed to establish commercial banks, private cellular connection and free market to attract funds and investments from the outside like United Arab Emirates states. As a result, Syrian state’s money was controlled by private companies and businessmen such as Rami Makhlouf, Muhammad Hamsho and others (Harba, 2011).

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democracy and public freedoms. However, Bashar Al-Assad killed any person who tried to undermine his legitimacy as Syrian President. Homs, Hama, Aleppo and Damascus are the major battlegrounds for fighting between who support Bashar al-Assad and others who are against him like what they called on them self “Free Syrian Army” (Harba, 2011, pp. 1-8).

2.4.2 The Path of the Syrian Crisis

After four years of intensified Syrian crisis, UN report classified these events as Syria civil war (sectarian) between Syrians Sunni anti- Basher Al-Assad Regime and who supported him from religious country's and ethnic minorities like Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Christians, Armenians, Druze. This report added that many Sunni groups came from outside to fight with the “Free Syrian Army4” against the state. According to Activists, more than 40,000 Syrians had been killed from both of them since 2011. Sergio Pinheiro, who heads an independent commission investigating abuses, indicates that Syrians Sunni who against Basher Al-Assad attached Alawis and minority communities for illegal executions. He believed that no military victory in the Syria civil war (Al-jazeera, 2012).

The leader of Lebanese group Hezbollah, Hasan Naser Allah, believes that if Bashar Assad's regime falls, it will be easy for Israel to attack Lebanon at any time. So, he promised to fight with Bashers regime against what he said “Takfirists Islamists” which are groups of Sunni Muslims kill anyone if they identified him as an infidel. In addition, he agrees with Syria government that there is a conspiracy from Israel and U.S on Syria (Mroue, 2013) .

4

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However, Syrian opposition replied on UN for saying “Syria’s conflict is not sectarian, that it is conflict between the Syrian government "Butcher" and people are demanding freedom and equality, and the revolution will not divide Syrian society according to religious or ethnic lines”. They think that UN report is far away from reality because members of the Commission of Inquiry didn’t visit Syria or neighboring countries. Furthermore, UN has to protect the civilians from genocide (NaharnetNews, 2012) .

By 2014, Secretary of State John F. Kerry declared that United States is responsible for helping whom affected by Syrian crisis which started since 2011. Also, Turkey provided 135$ million for USA to help Syrian refugees who are inside Syria and outside it (USAID, 2014).

2.4.3 Five Syria Events

In order to answer the research questions, the study aims to analyze the news of Aljazeera TV news on five Syrian events which are Al-Bayda and Baniyas, The Siege of Bab Amr, al Qusair and Khalidiya in Homs, Yarmouk camp, Chemical on Al Gota.

2.4.3.1 Al-Bayda and Baniyas “Massacres”

On May 2, 2013, more than 169 Syrians from women and children were killed by Al-Assad government during four hours in Al-Bayda village. This village, which is located in the western governorate of Tartu and it’s near the coast city of Baniyas, was helping who are deserted from the government’s soldiers to reach the areas that controlled by Syrian opposition (Newschannel4, 2013).

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women from men much later. For instance, 30 women and children were led to one room in Mustafa Biyasi house and they were killed there. It was very difficult to know their identities because their bodies were burned by the government, Um Mohammad was able to know her sons body only from his finger (Newschannel4, 2013).

Also, Sara (12 years old) one of the Syrians who survived from the “Massacres”, found her father tortured and murdered. Later, a strong battle started between Assad regime and its opposition in the mountain village of Bayda (Newschannel4, 2013) .

Although, many families tried to escape from these events toward Tartu, more than 77 Syrians were killed in the coastal town of Baniyas. However, the Syrian government replied that they were fighting “terrorist groups” in this area. US added “As the Assad regime's violence against innocent civilians escalates, we will not lose sight of the men, women, and children whose lives are being so brutally cut short” (Muir, 2013).

At that time, this word “#Massacre Of Baniyas” got a noticeable usage in the world on social networking site Twitter with over 22,000 tweets. It signifies the suffering of the Syrians and the call for international solidarity (Hamdan, 2013).

2.4.3.2 The Siege of Bab Amr

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"Khalidiya massacre" that killed nearly 340 people and 1,800 injured after the bombing of the neighborhood intense artillery bombardment. After that, Syrian Regime began a campaign which is considered as the most violent since Syrian activists started on Homs. Syrian Human Rights Network declared that 93 people killed by regime forces, most of them in Damascus, Homs and its countryside (Shaeer, 2013).

One of the citizen journalists “Hade Al Abdallah“ who is working as a journalist in Aljazeera said that more than 60 Syrians were killed in one day by Al-Assad Regime bombs in the region (AljazeeraNews, 2012)

2.4.3.3 Al Qusair and Khalidiya

In February, 2013, there was a massacre by the Syrian regime in the Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs which was seen as a massive demonstration of the opposition demand to topple the Regime. This massacre began when the Syrian army besieged Khalidiya neighborhood with tanks and they started bombing the homes of unarmed civilians. Security forces entered the neighborhood and slaughtered the entire families and collapsed the whole and the deaths of dozens under the rubble of buildings were recorded. This massacre led to the killing of more than 330 people and about 1,000 were wounded. This massacres spread to many other neighborhoods of Homs, including Baba Amr, Bayada, Baba Dreab (Lebanese-News, 2013)

2.4.3.4 Yarmouk camp

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When Syrians events began there, Al-Assad killed many Palestinians refugees in Yarmouk Camp. One day, Al-Assad killed more than 21 of Palestinians by using mortar and rockets. Al-Assad claims that Al Yarmouk has some terrorist groups and they are fighting them (Diab, 2012).

2.4.3.5 Al Chemical on Al Gota

One of the controversial issues is using chemical weapons by Al-Assad against Syrians people like Al Gota, North Damascus. By 2013, Syrian regime forces fired rockets loaded with deadly chemicals on the eastern and western Al Gota and areas of Damascus. As the result, more than 1,450 killed, including members of an entire family died strangled, and most of whom were children and women (Asharq, 2013).

Majed Abu Ali is a doctor and he treated victims of Al Gota massacre. He asserts that it’s not the first time. He continued by saying that there were many places that the Regime used chemical inclined weapons against civilians even many times before the massacre (Aljazeera, 2014).

He added that the Gota exposed to chemical weapons heavily in a densely populated area. He also confirmed that the weapon has been used more than five times after the massacre and was accompanied by various symptoms of the effect in the Harasta region. Lack of proper diagnosis equipment made the situation worst (Aljazeera, 2014).

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the population was able to overcome these circumstances potential statistics for Industry life (Aljazeera, 2014).

The study notices that Aljazeera news reports concentrated on Syrians who were afflicted with chemical bombs. The international committees especially United Nation reacted to the use of chemical against civilians. One of reports from international committee5 conforms that Al-Assad used chemical during Syrian civil war. In the same way, Britain discovered that sarin gas used from Syrian regime.

5_{International Committee: this committee seeks for using chemical from Al Assad Regime against} civilians. Later, this committee sent from UN, and confirms that Al Assad uses chemical, and they made agreement with Al Assad to do not use internationally prohibited weapons. To watch some videos show Syrian suffered from this chemical gas, this study provides these links:

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Chapter 3

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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3.1 Research Design

In this study, both of quantitative and qualitative researches were employed. Firstly, qualitative research was used in presenting interviews with 15 Syrian citizen journalists.

“Qualitative research is providing an in-depth and interpreted understanding of the social world of research participants by learning about their social and material circumstances, their experiences, perspectives, and histories” (Moriarty, 2011, p. 2)

The study interviewed 15 citizen journalists. They are Ward Ateek, Abd Al Kader Habak, Murad Al Shawakh, Bassam Fkre, Mohammad Jadan, Saef Azzam, Abd Al Razeq Rajab, Mahmoud Shehabi, Firas Horetani, Majd Raslan, Melad Fadel, Naji Jerf, Mohammad Al Jazyri, Emad Husso, and the last one journalist (A). The aim of interviews is to know the importance of Syrian citizen journalism, the problems of Syrian citizen journalism, and the similarities and differences between citizen and mainstream journalism. In addition, the study discusses the challenges and problems between both of journalism.

Secondly, quantitative research presents through using content analysis for the five Syrian events on Al Jazeera news channel. The instrument of data collection is questionnaire. Creswell (2003) defined quantitative research:

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SPSS program used to analysis the data which comes from questionnaire. This questionnaire contains on 25 questions which examines the content of five Syria events from Aljazeera channel, and its relationship with citizen journalists during 2011-2013.

3.2 Sample of the Study

The study asks citizen journalists 13 questions which are related with Syrian citizen journalism. For instance, he seeks to find the importance of Syrian citizen journalism, and the problems of Syrian citizen journalism, and the similarities and differences between citizen and mainstream journalism. In addition, the sudy discusses the challenges and problems between both types of journalism. To find the relationship between citizen and mainstream journalism, the study chose five Syrian events which were broadcasted on Aljazeera channel during 2011-2013. Al-Bayda and Baniyas, the siege of Bab Amr, al Qusair and khalidiya in Homs, Yarmouk camp, chemical on Al Gota are the name of the five Syria events. In the same way, the second part of questionnaire is focusing on the Syrians citizen journalists who are hosted on Aljazeera newscasts. Because of that, the study uses 10 newscasts from Aljazeera that related with the chosen events and are available on YouTube. The duration of the newscasts is between 1-3 hours.

3.3 Instruments and Data Gathering Procedures

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and the last one journalist (A) from Idlib city was documenting violations with UNESCO organization, and prefer to called him as citizen journalist.

Secondly, he checks the relationship through using the content of Syrian news which was covered on Aljazeera news. So, study designs a questionnaire that consists of 25 questions. The first part of questionnaire examines 82 news reports videos from the five Syria events in many items like the source, quality, content of footage, the source, and quality of information during 2011-2013. In addition, the feature of interviews, the most repeated words, and the frames were used in Aljazeera news footage. The second part of questionnaire focuses on citizen journalists “activists” inside Aljazeera newscasts.

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Chapter 4 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

4.1 Interviews with Syrians Citizens Journalists

The study interviewed 15 Syrians citizens’ journalists through the internet from December 2014 –March 2015. The Syrians citizens’ journalists are Ward Ateek, Abd Al Kader Habak, Murad Al Shawakh, Bassam Fkre, Mohammad Jadan, Saef Azzam, Abd Al Razeq Rajab, Mahmoud Shehabi, Firas Horetani, Majd Raslan, Melad Fadel, Naji Jerf, Mohammad Al Jazyri, Emad Husso, and the last one Journalist (A) is from Idlib city. He documented the Syrian violations to UNESCO6. He prefers to be anonymous and I tag him Citizen Journalist (A). In other to answer the leading questions (research questions), the study asks them 13 questions. The aim of the questions is to know the importance of Syrian citizen journalism, the problems of Syrian citizen journalism, and the similarities and differences between citizen and mainstream journalism. In addition, the study discusses the challenges and problems between both of journalism.

4.1.1 Importance of Syrian Citizen Journalism

The study asks citizen journalists the importance of Syrian citizen journalism to them. Many of them said, it’s very important to cover news on a demonstration against the Al-Assad Regime. Abd Alkader Habak, one of the citizen journalists, said that “government media blackout for the Syria news especially from journalist who

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The Relationship between Citizen and Mainstream Journalism for Covering Syria News